


no grave can hold my body down (i crawl home to her)

by sapphoslover



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Nightmares, Post-Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:40:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23836279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphoslover/pseuds/sapphoslover
Summary: Quidditch, flowers, sunlight and spun-silver tangled in Ginny's fingers like hope.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 42
Kudos: 84
Collections: Femmefest 2020





	no grave can hold my body down (i crawl home to her)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lejic](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Lejic).



> for the femmefest! 
> 
> Huge thanks to my beta who made this worth posting. thank you so so so much. i could not have done this without you.

  
  
  


_There is no beauty in destruction. No beauty in the crumbled buildings of Hogwarts, no beauty in the tears on her mother’s face,_ Ginny thinks in broken cursive and rumbling engine sounds, _no beauty anywhere, anymore._ She thinks as her mother clutches her head to her chest and she lets herself rest, or some semblance of it. 

___

The first thing Ginny does is cut her hair. The second week at Hogwarts after the rebuilding, or however close they got to it, she finds herself, through coincidence or something else, in the Ravenclaw bathroom, with Luna's scissors in her hands. It is not neat, but nothing she does ever is. It is haphazard and some strands are longer than others but when she looks down at the strands in the sink, all she can feel is relief. 

"Looks good."

She turns around, ready to strike if need be, battle-sharp instincts still wedged in the crevices of her bones and does not relax when she sees Luna. Her heart beats hummingbird-fast in her ribcage but she manages a smile, only for Luna.

"Thanks," she says, "I needed something new." 

"It's a good look on you," replies Luna, "but then, most things are."

Not for the first time, Ginny envies and relishes the way Luna just _says_ things, in the way she lets her words coil around the hair in the sink, coil around Ginny's own fucking heart and hold _tight, tight, tight._ and Ginny — she couldn't leave, even if she wanted to. But, she doesn't think she would ever want to. 

“I took your scissors. Hope you don’t mind.” Ginny says, only to fill the space with words, only to get Luna to stay, a little longer.

“Of course not. They’re only scissors. Whatever is mine is always yours, you know that, Ginny.” 

When Ginny looks at her in the mirror in front of her, Luna is smiling, bright with teeth and Ginny thinks that she _must_ know, in the way Luna knows things, she must know that Ginny wants her here, always, that Ginny doesn’t quite know what she would do without Luna, that she would say anything and everything, would talk for hours if that meant Luna would stay. 

But she doesn’t say that, not yet. 

“Did you want to come back?” Luna asks, leaning against the door of the bathroom, arms folded across her chest, her hair an ocean of silver that Ginny wishes she could feel.

Her fingers itch with it, with the need to move, so she grasps the scissors tighter, cuts her hair some more. 

“I didn’t want to not come back.” 

Luna hums, the sound catches somewhere between Ginny’s fingers and she sets down the scissors.

“May I?” Luna asks.

Ginny doesn’t quite know what Luna is asking for, but she says yes. 

Luna moves fast and quiet, with the stillness of an animal caught amongst headlights, even as she moves to stand in front of where Ginny is, leaning against the sink.

She raises her hands, threads her fingers through Ginny’s hair, parting them towards one side, running her fingers through them, over and over, and Ginny tries to speak, to say something witty, something to make Luna laugh but she can’t. Can’t focus on anything while Luna’s fingers feel so unbelievably gentle, so much like some sort of salvation.

“There!” Luna beams, brightness in every pore of her.

Ginny turns around to look in the mirror, and does not recoil. She does not think she’s ever felt as close to herself as she does in that moment, this moment that now seems to suspend in the air above her, time stilling to a stop in the beaten off-road track of their lives — this life, where she gets to look at Luna almost whenever she wishes, where Luna is warm beside her. 

“I like it.” Ginny says, her voice a little hoarse but still hers. 

Luna hums, “that wasn’t quite an answer, by the way. If you don’t want to answer, you can say that. I’ll tell you mine: I did want to come back. It feels like something’s settled, now that I’m back.” 

Ginny swallows, tampers down the ghost of _some_ feeling that seems to rise in her chest as Luna’s words, her voice makes a home, again, between the hollows of her bones. 

“I can’t wait to play Quidditch.” She says, which, is not a lie but it’s also not complete. She could say more, but she’s never been very good at it all, at the talking that requires her to feel, that requires her to lay those feelings out and let someone prod and poke and hold them in their fingers. Despite it all, she is afraid that fragility is something that she was born with and something she, perhaps, can’t lose. 

Luna hums again, the sound slithering into and above Ginny’s skin like an old shirt that always fits perfectly no matter how many years later you wear it. 

“Are you going to the Great Hall for dinner?” Luna asks. 

“I think I’ll skip it tonight. Mum sent some food along.”

“I’d like to come with you. I don’t quite feel like going to the Great Hall today.”

Sometimes, Ginny’s heart beats so loud that it drowns out the cacophony in her head and she wonders how no one else can hear it. But Luna looks at her with eyes brighter than anything alive has a right to be and the noise dies down, just a little. 

“Yes,” Ginny says and Luna’s eyes shine even brighter 

___

Ginny takes her to the top of the Astronomy Tower. The light breeze ruffles Luna’s hair and Ginny’s fingers ache with the need to touch it, to feel something underneath the fingers that does not smell of battle, that does not hurt simply by way of existing, but, she supposes. Luna _hurts._ Looking at her hurts, looking at her and not being able to touch her hurts. The knowledge that someone like her can exist in a world that punishes any kind of softness hurts Ginny to the core of her. 

“Ginny?” She whispers and rests her hand close to where Ginny’s lies on the railing. 

“Yes, I’m fine. Sorry.”

“Where did you go?” Luna asks and for a very fleeting moment, Ginny thinks she can hear it all — all the loudness in her head, her heart. 

“Not anywhere pleasant.” Ginny replies, leans towards the wryness she’s known her whole life.

Luna laughs and Ginny locks that noise in the deepest crevice of heart and swears to keep it safe. 

“I wonder when that will change ”

She moves to sit down, leaning against the wall and Ginny joins her without having been asked. She would follow Luna into the depths of hell and would never regret it.

Luna hands her one of the sandwiches her mum had given her and Ginny sits beside her. 

Luna is warm. It always takes her a bit by surprise, the warmth of her, the way she always smells like the beginning of something new, the way she always makes Ginny feel invincible. 

“Can it change?” Ginny says, feeling the rumbles of a war she lived through in every inch of the castle. No amount of rebuilding will take away the blood inside the heart of the castle — this castle that still feels like home. 

“Not entirely, I don’t think so. But, maybe it can be mended just a little?” 

Ginny laughs, dry and low in the cool air around them. Luna slides closer.

“I don’t think it can.” She says.

“You don’t believe that. Not completely.” Luna replies, voice honey-like as if she’d been talking about something as lovely as picking flowers and not the ghosts living inside all of their heads.

“You don’t know what I believe.” Ginny says, perhaps, harsher than she had intended but Luna does not move away, does not remove her hand from where it rests right beside Ginny’s, does not take away her warmth.

“Maybe you don’t know what you believe, either.” 

Ginny turns her head to look at Luna. She’s smiling, all moonlight fitted into one mouth and it seems so unsuited to the conversation they’re having but Ginny would be damned if she took her eyes away from Luna.

Ginny knows she’s brave, knows she isn’t afraid of a fight, she’s been fighting her whole fucking life, that takes bravery and Ginny knows she’s brave but there is something about the moonlight in Luna’s smile, something about the spun silver of her hair that makes the world catch in Ginny’s throat and makes her wish she was just a little more braver. Had she been, she might have kissed Luna. 

___

  
  


Hogwarts tries to return to something coherent. Ginny can see the effort in the way the walls hold together and the students flit from one class to another. She can see it in the way Professor McGonagall stands — tall but never imposing, a comforting presence, a shield. 

Ginny smiles at her when she passes her in the halls and she nods, once, and for that moment, Ginny is glad to be back. 

___

In the evening, it rains, loud and thunderous and the Quidditch Pitch is completely empty and Ginny doesn’t mind the rain, never has, so she wears her kit and takes her broom and steps outside.

Being on a broom is, in the very simplest of words, like coming home. Or, more so, it is wind in her ears, sharp noise that drives away everything else, it is few moments of solace where she does not have to be aware of anything else, of the knife-pain in her heart every morning she wakes up, of Fred’s absence like a missing limb, or the pain of never having felt Luna’s lips on hers. Being on a broom is like stepping somewhere, where feeling nothing except the wind, sharp as needles on her face is freeing. It is coming back to a home that she wasn’t quite sure existed until she stepped foot inside it. 

She flies, aimlessly, brutally, thinks of nothing else but the solidity of the broom under her, real and present and takes all the comfort she doesn’t ask anywhere else for, from it. Her hands almost feel like hers again, the red-blood reminders of war still etched amongst the lines of her palms, so she grips the broom harder, hopes, hopes, hopes they’ll go away.

She doesn’t quite know for how long she flies but by the time she reaches the ground, her muscles sing with glorious pain of having done something she loves.

And then, she sees Luna, standing beside the stand, clutching her robe in her hands and something fragile inside her shatters, just a little. 

“What’re you doing here? You’re soaking, Luna.” She yells, walks as fast as she can, begs her voice to reach Luna before she can.

Luna smiles as Ginny reaches her, “You’re soaking as well.”

“What are you doing here?”  
  
“I came to see you fly.” Says Luna and Ginny blames her knees going weak on her exhaustion after the flying. She can pretend, just a bit, inside her own head. 

“You’ve seen me fly before.”

“It suits you. It always looks like you’re commanding the wind and not the other way around, when you fly.”

Ginny swallows, wonders what words, if any, would encompass the _wholeness_ that overtakes her every time Luna talks, wonders if any such words exist, that could possibly, convey even half of what she _feels_ , for Luna. 

If there are, Ginny doesn’t know them yet. 

But, she’s always been better at _doing_ than speaking, has always found everything to be easier once she knows what to do with her hands. 

She wraps an arm around Luna’s shoulder, heart-beat a frantic melody inside her chest. Luna hums in tune with it. 

“We might catch a cold.” Luna says, voice floating somewhere among the rain.

“We should go inside.” Ginny agrees, but does not move. Neither does Luna.

Her arm remains around Luna’s shoulder as Luna turns, just a bit, to look at Ginny. Luna is beautiful all the time, but there is something almost eerie, about her in the rain. The sound of it falling on the ground merging with Luna’s voice and making the hair on Ginny’s arm stand up. 

It rises in her like a tide, the need to be closer to Luna, to feel her under her fingers, and she’s been so good at pushing it down, down, _down,_ she wonders why it’s so fucking hard now. 

She swallows, once, twice, wills the humming-bird beat of heart to slow down, wills her hands to stay, for once, fucking _stay._

 _“_ Let’s go inside.” 

When she starts walking, Luna follows her. 

___

She goes back. 

The weekend brings it with a sort of melancholia she isn’t prepared to deal with, yet. The emptiness of no classes sharper than a glass shard between her ribs as Hogwarts radiates with the remnants of battle.

It never quite goes away, she thinks. Her home is forever a battleground, no matter how many times it’s been cleaned. 

But, it isn’t the only home she has. And her first home awaits her, standing crooked and tall, surrounded by the green that spreads, spreads, spreads.

When she enters, the relief she feels almost drives her to her knees. 

Hermione meets her at the door.

“You’re late.” She says and wraps her arms around Ginny. Ginny lets her head fall into the space between her neck and shoulder. Hermione smells like tea and grass and everything Ginny’s missed.

“Where’s everyone?” She says into Hermione’s neck.

“Your mum’s out back. She’s watering the plants. Harry, Ron and George are at the shop. They’ll be back soon.”

Ginny holds her, for just a minute and wishes she were in love with Hermione, instead. 

Because Hermione is beautiful and warm and doesn’t make Ginny’s heart _hurt_ when she looks at her, doesn’t make her fingers ache to touch. Hermione is _safe._

But, Hermione is also in love with her brother. Ginny thinks that she could have made peace with all of that if she had to. 

Because she does not know what to do with the rumble in her chest when Luna says her name, does not know what to do with the needle-sharp hellscape all over when Luna’s eyes meet hers.

Hermione says, “Ginny?”

Ginny manages a half-moon of a smile and Hermione beams with the power of a thousand suns.

When her mum says, “Ginny!” with poorly disguised relief in the vastness of her voice, Ginny loses herself, just a little. 

Her mother smells like hope. 

“You’ve cut your hair!” She says when her arms drop from around Ginny’s shoulders.

“So I have.” Ginny agrees.

“I like it.” Hermione smiles, amusement in the furrow of her eyebrows, love in the crinkle of her eyes.

Ginny grins back.

“Alright, you children, I’m going to finish up. Ginny, I’ve cleaned your old room. Hermione and I made some sandwiches while waiting, so help yourself, dear.” She kisses Ginny’s hair and Ginny _aches_. 

“I don’t know if you’re actually hungry but she insisted we make something for you before lunch.” Says Hermione as they go upstairs to Ginny’s room.

“I’m not opposed to eating.” 

“No, I suppose you never are.” Hermione offers her a brilliant smile as she laughs.

Her room looks the same, there is no dust. 

“So,” Begins Hermione as Ginny sits on her bed and wonders if anything else will ever feel as secure, and unbidden, she sees Luna’s smiling face, her hair spilling over Ginny’s sheets and she wills it away with all the force she can muster. 

“So,” She echoes.

“How was it?” Hermione asks, sitting next to Ginny. 

“Mostly the same,” Ginny thinks of Professor McGonagall’s nod, thinks of the blood that was once wedged between the walls of Hogwarts and says, “a bit more, ruined, I suppose. But still, alive.”

Hermione hums, rests her hand on Ginny’s knee and Ginny takes it before she can help it, feels the solidity of it like the first breath of fresh air. 

“It must be hard.” Hermione whispers and Ginny _loves_ her, “I don’t think I could go back.”

Ginny thinks of silver hair, of raindrops on eyelashes and says, “I didn’t think I could, either. But, well.” 

Hermione looks at her and Ginny feels as if all her nerves have been exposed. 

“I do know, you know? Ron and Harry do as well.” 

“Enlighten me.” Ginny sighs and Hermione laughs.

“Gin, it’s okay.”

“I know.” Ginny says, because she _does._ And it is okay. It is okay that she’s so in love with Luna Lovegood that sometimes she can’t breathe if she’s not around, it is okay that she can’t fucking sleep anymore and when she does, she wakes up with the image of Luna, bloodied and broken, painted behind her eyelids, it is okay that some days she wakes up and forgets that Fred’s dead. It is okay, it is okay. 

Hermione squeezes her hand tighter Ginny takes in the smoothness of her dark skin, how it still holds after everything it has been put through, how all of their skins still seem to hold somehow. 

“Have you told her?” Hermione asks, tentative in a way Ginny hasn’t seen often. 

“I don’t know how to. What would I even say? _Hey Luna, you’re my best friend but I actually want to kiss you very much but this is terrible timing because both of us just survived a war and I’m afraid I’ll lose you if I even mention it to you?”_

Hermione looks at her and laughs, so loud, so free that Ginny has to join, because she doesn’t know when, _if,_ she would privy to such happiness again. 

“Ginny,” She says, between laughter, her voice like the first snowfall, “Have you ever seen the way Luna looks at you?”

Ginny shakes her head, “It’s not — I’m her friend, her _only_ friend at Hogwarts right now, it, it wouldn’t _work._ ”

“And you know that, how?”

“It’s just what happens. I mean, this is hardly the time—”

Hermione makes a disagreeing sound somewhere from the bottom of her throat and Ginny’s so familiar with it that she can’t help but smile.

“There is never a good time.” Hermione says, stops, her eyes seem to flit aimlessly from the window in Ginny’s room to the table next to her bed. Ginny knows that Hermione, too, doesn’t quite know what to do with words that don’t have a reference in the thousands of books she owns, doesn’t quite know what to do with words that she has to craft herself. 

So Ginny squeezes her hand once, smiles at her, and Hermione lets out a breath.

“There really isn’t a good time, Ginny, I mean, Ron and I started a relationship in the middle of the war. And I don’t regret a second of it. Who’s to say what’ll work and what won’t?”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to take it if it doesn’t.” Ginny says and feels as if the strings holding her together have come undone, somehow, feels hollow in a way that comforts. 

“You will,” Says Hermione, iron-firmness in her voice and it really isn’t a surprise that Ron is so in love with her, “you’ll be able to take it because it won’t be an end. The end already happened, Ginny, and we made it out.” 

Ginny thinks of Fred, thinks of the half-moon shadows under George’s eyes, thinks of how he broke every mirror in his room, thinks of the sweat on her palms every night before she goes to bed, because there are no nightmares during the day and says, “Did we? Make it out? It doesn’t feel like we did.” 

“No,” Hermione whispers. “Sometimes it doesn’t. But, well, we are still here. Make of it what you like.” 

Ginny turns the words around in her head, over and over, examines them from all angles and thinks, _yes, she can make do with that, even if it takes her whole life to do it._

She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t think she needs to.

___

Harry, George and Ron arrive like a large tide — loud and expectant. They take away every remnant of the past and leave nothing but the sandy flickers of a hazy future in their wake. 

Ginny’s heart bursts, a little, inside her chest. 

George talks about the shop, animatedly and it _hurts,_ it hurts to watch this happen without Fred, it feels like she’s lost a limb and when she looks at George, at how he, sometimes, still turns to see if someone will complete his sentence, Ginny feels her breath being knocked out of her chest.

Harry talks as he used to, he laughs a little bit more, she thinks, even if it sounds hollow — as if someone has cut down a tree and snatched the roots from the ground. 

He’s brave, braver than she could ever be.

Ron seems the brightest of them all — taking on the task of being the light-bearer gently from George’s hands. Ginny couldn’t be more grateful if she tried. And she tells him that when she holds him a little tighter, a little longer.

Her father comes home in the evening and when they sit down to eat, the smell of food hovering in the air like a welcome guest, something inside Ginny loosens. 

___

George slips into her room late at night with a bottle of fire whisky and a palm-full of hope.

“I know you’re awake.”

“Does mum know you’ve nicked that?”

“Nicked? How dare you. Honour is my armour. I bought this with my own money.” 

“Does she know you’re using your hard earned money to get drunk?”

“Some things are better left unsaid.” 

Ginny laughs and something soft and yellow expands in her chest. She thinks it might be something akin to happiness, if miracles are to be believed. 

George sits next to her on the bed and hands her the bottle. 

The fire-whisky burns all the way down and she _missed this._

“How’s the shop?”

“Pretty alright.” 

“And you?” She says, drinks some more to quiet the loud thumping of her heart. 

Even in the dark, she can see the twist of something bitter on George’s face and this time, she does not drink, because she does not think she deserves to lessen the ache. 

“I’m dandy, Gin. What about _you_ and _Luna?”_

Ginny thinks she’d let him tease her about Luna for eternity if it meant that she’d never see anguish sharper than blades on his face ever again. 

“Nothing about Luna. She’s a friend.”

“Mhm.”

“What.”

“Nothing at all.”

“Oh, speak. I can tell it’s physically hurting you to not say it.”

George laughs and Ginny doesn’t think she’s ever heard anything better. 

“I _know_ that the reason you went back was to see her.”

“And how do you know that?”

“It’s on your face every time you see her.” 

Ginny looks away from him, it’s unsettling, it’s always been unsettling, how easily he can see through everything she tries to keep hidden, from everyone, from herself. 

She says, “Bullshit.” 

And George laughs again. Ginny tucks that sound behind her ear for safekeeping. 

“Now’s the time, Ginny.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that to me?”

“Who said it?”

“Hermione.” 

“Well, she’s almost always right so I agree with her.”

“Ugh. Stop.”

George shoves her lightly and she laughs, giddy with drink and George’s presence and the feeling of _rightness_ somewhere inside her chest. 

“I don’t know how to,” She begins, and doesn’t quite know what to do with that. 

George hums, “You’ll figure it out. And if you don’t, she will.” 

“She’s better at all this.”

“How do you know that?”

“I — I don’t?” 

George laughs again, “No, you don’t. You don’t know a lot of things, Gin. And that’s okay.”

“Why are all of you so hung up on me asking Luna out?”

“Because,” George says and his voice becomes a little heavy, a little more world wary and Ginny wants to fight everything that made it sound like that. “It seems like she might make you come back to the world a little bit more.” 

Ginny wishes she could cry. She looks at George, at the hair he dyed purple, and she wishes so desperately that she could still cry.

“Seize the day, carpe diem and all that rot.” George grins, knife-bright in the dusk of spindly moonlight and it pierces through something iron-thick in Ginny’s chest.

“Are you,” She begins, finds the courage her mother tucked behind her ribcage some 18 years ago, “seizing the day? Carpe-dieming and all that rot?”

“What else have I ever done?” He says, the corner of his mouth twisting into something bitter that lasts for a second but Ginny catches it, catches it in her palms (because she’s good at that) and keeps it somewhere dark so that she knows how to never make it happen on George’s face again.

“You’re fine.” She insists, helpless in the face of it all, courage and bravery gone to the dogs when despair knocks on her door, relentless as a beast.

“Yes,” George looks at her and he sees too much, _has always seen too much_ , “Don’t get soft on me.”

Ginny huffs something close to a laugh, it’s more than so much she can manage on most days, and she’s grateful for it, for all the small mercies she didn’t know she could get. 

“Do something about it before she finds another emotionally-constipated Quidditch player. There’s no shortages of them, you know.”

Ginny shoves at his shoulder a bit, and the ache that has been there ever since Fred died doesn’t ease so she shoves at George twice, for good luck and sees his smile reflected in the moon. 

____

“Have you got everything?” Her mother asks, hands not stilling once as she touches Ginny’s face, her hair.

“I do, mum.”

“Are you sure you’ll be able to get back on your own?” Says her father, worry etched on his face.

“Yes, dad. I came here on my own. I can get back.” 

She embraces all of them, gives some pieces of her away, takes some from them. Maintains balance. She hopes she can get back, she hopes, hopes, hopes.

___

Hogwarts _is_ there, looming and golden on the precipice of a late Sunday afternoon. She’s glad Professor McGonagall let them go home, even for a day. 

Hogwarts seems more _welcoming_ now, less like a hostile home of dead spirits and more _alive._ Maybe it’s just the afternoon glow, or maybe it’s the aftermath of George’s words in her ears.

She finds Luna under a large tree next to the Great Lake, her hair shimmering with the glint of old-silver in the sun. 

“Did you have a good time?” Luna asks, nothing but light on her face. 

“I think so,” Ginny says and it’s the truth, “You?”

“Oh, yes. I planted some more dirigible plums. I do think I was followed by some very dedicated wrackspurts.” 

“Oh?” Ginny says, and her heart starts up again, some tune that’s been playing since the first day Luna said _hello, do you want me to get rid of those wrackspurts above your head?_ This tune that she can’t figure out the words to, that rings loud in her ears, something she welcomes and fears in equal parts. “Something going on in your head they find interesting?”

Luna hums, keeps the she was reading upside-down on her lap, “Well, there’s usually a lot of things going on but since the past few days it’s been only you.”

Ginny looks at her. Luna’s always been beautiful, but under the sun with her head tilted sideways, eyes focussed on Ginny, the sunlight a halo on her hair, she looks like something out of a legend her mother used to tell her before bed, like those Muggle princesses locked in towers, waiting to be rescued, but, Ginny thinks if anyone needs the rescuing here, it’s her. Not Luna, who carries the world on her shoulders and doesn’t let them bend, who still laughs with her eyes, whom Ginny can’t ever stop loving.

Ginny doesn’t quite know what to say so she puts her arm around Luna and in a thrum of bravery kisses the top of her head.

She feels Luna’s smile on her shoulder and she wishes it burned just so she’d have proof of it. 

___

Return to normalcy, to coherence is not possible without Quidditch matches so that is what Professor McGonagall does.

Ginny practices as much as she can. She captains her team and spends a lot of her time flying. She convinces herself it’s because she’s apprehensive of the match and not because she doesn’t know what to do with the fact that most nights, she wakes up with her heart in her throat and the phantom-feeling of Luna’s blood on her hands.

___

“For good luck.” Luna says and pins a small wreath made of peonies on her kit. Ginny memorises the movement of her hands, the deftness of them, on her worn kit.

“I’m playing against your house.” Ginny says.

Luna smiles wide, eyes crinkling at the edges and it takes Ginny’s breath away.

“I’m rooting for you.” Luna says, soft in the barely-existent space before the match and Ginny feels her bones being lit on fire.

“I’ll win for you.” Ginny replies, a confession.

“I know.” Luna’s eyes twinkle, another confession, in its own right. 

___

It starts to rain in the middle of the match but they win. When the snitch is caught, she finds Luna in the stands, her smile burning through every wall Ginny has created.

Luna wraps her arms around Ginny’s shoulders, whispers, “I knew you’d win,” and Luna is dripping onto the ground, she’s shivering when Ginny puts her hands around her waist. Her eyes are fever-bright in the moonlight and Ginny is so _fucking tired_ , it’s so cold and Luna is warm and _real_ in her arms and Ginny says:

“Can I kiss you?”

Luna nods.

So Ginny does. It catches Luna by surprise, she knows, because she swallows the startled sound from Luna’s throat— the sound that might have been Ginny’s own name and vows to hear it again every day until she dies. 

There is pink on Luna’s cheeks— lovely and soft and Ginny’s heart _beats, beats, beats_ like the tremors before an earthquake, but this— this is a beginning not an end. 

Ginny unclasps the wreath from her chest and secures it into Luna’s braid, “Your luck worked.”

Luna laughs, surprise falling from her lips into the air, all around Ginny and she has to kiss her again and again and again.

“Come home with me,” Luna breathes, “this Friday. Come home with me. My father is going away for a while. He said he wanted a breath of fresh air. I’d like for you to see the fruits I’ve planted.”

Ginny plants her _yes_ into Luna’s mouth.

___

Luna’s home looks as if it could _breathe_ , Ginny thinks it might, Luna gives life to everything she touches, lets it leak from her palms like nectar, sweet and pure. 

“Are these the ones you planted?” Ginny gestures to the plums growing around the house, spreading, spreading, spreading, theo range of them melting with the house. It’s beautiful. And Ginny can see traces of Luna everywhere. 

“Oh, yes. They’re growing quite fast, aren’t they?” 

Ginny nods as Luna leads the way inside.

“I tried to grow some aconite,” Luna says, “I think the soil around here is a little dusty.” 

“Dusty?”

“Oh, yes. They grow in the wild. I think the soil there might be cleaner, more untouched. It’s just dad and me here, but even so, the soil gets dusty. It remembers things, you know?”

“And the walls have ears?” Ginny says, teases, teases, because she doesn’t quite know what’s happening now, with them. There is something in the air around them, the static energy of it making the hair on arms stand up, the static energy of _Luna_ , making her heart beat faster than ever. 

“Oh, they do.” Luna says, somber except for the solitary point of light in her eyes — Ginny’s beacon of hope. “Everything in this world can breathe, everything has life. _Everything._ We just tend to forget that sometimes.”

Ginny thinks _you have the most life I’ve ever seen in anyone._ She says, “It’s a hard thing to remember.” 

Luna smiles at her — Ginny doesn’t quite know what it means, it teeters on the edge of something she feels she’s been skirting for so long, so long. 

“You always remember.” Luna whispers, the words clasping onto the air with blunt fingernails. 

Maybe it’s Luna’s house that smells like freedom, or maybe it’s the silence of everything around them except for her own heart and Luna’s.

Maybe it’s just Ginny. 

She kisses Luna. In the middle of Luna’s kitchen, with a hand on her waist and the other in her hair. She swallows her surprise and leans in further to get more, more, _more._

She doesn’t think she could ever get used to this, no matter how many times she feels Luna’s lips under her own, soft as candle-light, yielding for the storm Ginny has always been.

Luna’s touch, feather-light, still burns into her skin, everywhere she touches comes alive, as if all the energy of the entire universe belongs inside of Luna’s palm. Ginny holds onto her waist tighter, brings her closer, closer, closer. Luna fits into her crevices as if she’d always belonged there. Ginny thinks she might have. 

She runs her fingers through Luna’s hair, spun silver melting into her palm, erasing everything that had been there before. A cleansing. 

“I was going to cook for you.” Luna says, breathless, the rise and fall of her chest against Ginny’s as new as the waxing and waning of the moon, as new as hope. 

“Let me help.” Ginny kisses the side of her face, her eyebrow, her chin. 

Luna beams. 

___

They end up on the broom an hour after eating and cleaning. Ginny had brought hers to Luna’s home.

When Luna said she hadn’t flown in ages, well, flying was something Ginny knows like the back of her hands, better, because her hands haven’t felt like hers in a while. 

She sits behind Luna. Everywhere Luna’s body touches hers, feels like a blessing. 

They fly for a while, her body thrums with Luna’s delighted laughter, and the wind, cold and shielding, around them. 

When they land, Luna turns around in the circle of Ginny’s arms and kisses her, tasting of the wind and something else that seems out of this world and any other. Ginny holds her tighter, kisses a little more forcefully, because she’s thought about this for years. Years of stolen glances and faux-innocent touches and it took a bloody war for her to taste Luna.

Luna pulls away, eyes ever-bright with urgency that Ginny feels down to her very core.

She feels like a live-wire, lit from the inside, ready to explode at the slightest of touches.

“Are we really doing this?” Luna asks, her voice low against Ginny’s cheek.

“If you want to.”

“Oh, you _know,_ Ginny. You don’t have to lie to me.”

“No,” Ginny says, so very in love, “I don’t have to lie to you.”

Luna’s smile tugs at her heartstrings, as it always has, and now, she gets to taste it, gets to hoard it inside her empty haunted-house of a heart, gets to hold it between her teeth.

___

Luna’s bedroom wall has Ginny, Harry, Ron, Nevile and Hermione painted in the most magnificent of colours.

Her sheets are startling blue Ginny’s mind reels imagining what Luna would look like on them, the lightness of her standing out like something conjured from the depths of the sea.

Ginny says, “What do you want?”

“Everything you can give me. Everything you want to give me.” 

“Are you sure?”

Luna smiles, walks over to her, takes Ginny’s hand and places it on her own chest, over her heartbeat, that matches Ginny’s own, not entirely steady but so, so, so real under Ginny’s hand.

“I don’t think it would be beating like this if I weren’t. It’s usually quite steady, you know? I think it just likes you a bit more.”

“How lucky for me.” Ginny breathes, places her hands under Luna’s thighs and picks her up, catches her delighted laugh in her mouth and takes her to bed.

Luna’s legs fall open as Ginny settles between them, feeling more at home than she has a right to.

The air crackles around them, something like magic and love and hope floating in it as if beckoning something new.

Ginny feels it right down to her bones, to the way her magic simmers under the surface of her skin, older than life itself.

Luna’s arms wrap around her shoulders, pull her closer, closer, closer, _she’s so close._ She kisses her again, years of wanting spilling into Luna’s mouth as she drags her hand under her shirt, whispers, “Okay?”

Luna nods, breath a frenzy, eyes fever-bright as thunder sounds, fearless and loud, outside of her window. Luna’s mouth quirks in a smile, “You cause thunder.”

“Do I, now?” Ginny laughs, hands coming alive as they touch Luna’s skin. Her whole body feels lit up from somewhere inside of her. Luna’s skin under her fingers the first breath of air after years locked in something dark and damp.

Ginny feels more alive than she ever has, like being on a broom, but _maybe,_ better. 

She fits her hands over Luna’s heartbeat, her breasts, catches the way her eyes go wide and she arches into Ginny’s hands, a sight for the sorest of eyes.

Ginny plants the proof of everything she is, everything she’s ever been on Luna’s neck in the shape of a teardrop that joins a wave of bruises turning purple under her lips, stark and lovely as wildflowers on Luna’s skin. 

She traces her lips over bare skin, skin that tastes like the sea— salt interspersed with the blue of freedom, leaves bruises in the shape of peonies with her mouth, goes back to taste them over and over and over.

Luna’s hands in her hair, her thighs a vice around Ginny, the rain falling outside a shield: a cradle. 

The press of Luna’s body against her mouth is better than any high she could ever experience, the feeling of it spreading through her body, fluid like water, like fire, erasing everything that had come before, leaving in its place a burned-out halo of peonies, of sea-water spun with silver-thread.

She drags her mouth over the spill of Luna’s thighs, the wonderment of it all better than anything in this universe or any other. The sounds Luna makes latch onto the chambers of Ginny’s heart and she locks them there, the best music she’s ever heard.

She gets her hand under the clasps of Luna’s skirt, Luna. who looks down at her with a breathless sort of frenzy in her eyes and wine-red cheeks. 

Ginny gets her mouth on Luna in the way she’s wanted to for fucking _years,_ feels something larger than a tide collapse into a raindrop inside her body, then immediately start up again, faster and larger than the end of the world wheh the taste of Luna settles on her tongue. She drags her tongue up to her clit, and sucks, gently, gently, gently, pure white europhia spreading through her like wildfire when Luna’s hands settle in her hair with red-hot surety. 

It’s not enough, though, like most things and so Ginny adds a finger inside her, drags her mouth up, up, up towards Luna’s stomach, feeling Luna around her finger. Luna laughs, breathlessly pleased as Ginny kisses her and feels Luna take off her bra.

“Is it okay if I take it off? It’s being bothersome.” 

“God, yes. We can’t have anything bothering you.” Ginny says, lit from the inside like a fuse, as she gets her mouth on Luna’s breasts and moves her finger inside of her, the sound Luna makes settling in the air and the dark-grey clouds outside, immersing with the rain that starts falling just as Ginny adds another finger, and Luna’s hands wrap around her shoulder, thighs tightening around her as if keeping her there, as if Ginny couldn’t spend her entire fucking life and a hundred more, trapped between Luna’s legs. 

She pulls her fingers out and drags her thumb to Luna’s lips, gentle as a river, and her lips part willingly, beautifully as she drags her tongue around Ginny’s broom-calloused thumb and heat spreads through Ginny, faster than wild-fire going straight between her legs. She _has_ to kiss Luna again, breaths mingling in a way she hopes _stays._

It feels fucking tragic, every second she’s not inside of Luna like a knife to the gut, so she gets her fingers around Luna again, drags her wet thumb over Luna’s clit, catches her gasp in her mouth and keeps it there, for guarding, for safe-keeping, a keepsake. 

“I might get a dick, next time.” She says into Luna’s mouth, her head going fuzzy with the tentative promise of _next time_ and Luna’s moan gets caught between the freckles on Ginny’s face.

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Luna gasps, breathless and beautiful, panting, hips arching into Ginny’s hand, “god you look a fucking vision, Gin.” 

Ginny shakes her head, her fingers moving in tune to a song whose beat is only known to the two of them, a secret passing between the marrow of their bones.

“You look like the end of the world.” She finds herself saying, words on the tip of her tongue as Luna gasps, gasps, gasps. 

Ginny kisses Luna again for good luck, all the peonies in the world nothing compared to the sweetness of Luna’s mouth and then tastes every inch of her again before getting her mouth beside her fingers.

She moves them slightly faster and drags the flat of her tongue over Luna’s clit, back to where her fingers join Luna, then back again, feels her spine light up like quicksilver with the way Luna’s thighs shake around her shoulders-- rumbling like that of an earthquake, one that seeks only to create, not destroy.

Luna comes around her fingers and her mouth with Ginny’s name spilling from her mouth like the first flowers of spring, colouring the room, the air with blessed, blessed, relief. She looks a goddess, under Ginny’s hands, like something pulled out of the depths of star dust and holy-fire and Ginny’s mind reels, reels, reels, with the way her name stays on the tips of Luna’s tongue and when she goes to taste it, it tastes like seawater, like the freshness of blooming spring, like hope.

Luna’s hands tighten around her shoulders with one more _Ginny_ spilling into the air and it goes straight to the heat between Ginny’s legs, her spine lighting up, up, up and she presses a hand between her legs, inside her pants and comes.

Luna’s hands travel softly like a murmur under her shirt, a question.

“May I?”

“Not yet.” Says Ginny, “is that a problem?”

Luna shakes her head, sweat on her skin glimmering like the rain outside the window, “Never a problem. I can wait, and if you never want me to, that’s okay, as well.”

Ginny kisses her, and Luna lets herself be kissed, giddy laughter travelling up both their lungs and Luna shuffles with the sheets for her wand to clean them up, faster than lightning. 

Ginny changes her clothes, watches with pure, sweltering, possessiveness as Luna pulls her sweater over her shoulders, swiping her hair from under it, spun silver stark against the dark red of Ginny’s sweater. She turns to look at Ginny, faux coyness betrayed only by the glint of thunder in her eyes.

Ginny finds herself swaying with the force of it all and falls into bed with a laughing Luna half on top of her. She thinks she’s home, she thinks, if home is anywhere, it is this feeling: it is this feeling of pure silence in her head except the sound of Luna’s soft breath and the weight of her body on top of hers like salvation spun around her with silver thread.

___

Ginny wakes with lightning painted behind her eyes, and night fallen outside, heart thudding in her ribcage like a bird after its first flight. 

In the dead of the night there are not a lot of things she can see, but she can see Luna’s hair in the moonlight like spun silver, feel her hands across her stomach, lighter than being on a broom. She feels weightless like this, with Luna scrawled atop her, murmuring what she hopes are words of love and hope in her dreams. 

_How are we going to do this_ , Ginny thinks and passes it onto Luna with her fingers drumming across her ribcage to the beat of a song never written but one Luna understands anyway. Luna hums in her sleep, with no melody, like most things she does, graceless in their work, like the earth preparing for war, like the last breath you take before the apocalypse. _This_ , Ginny thinks, is what she couldn’t bear to lose. 

In the moonlight, Luna looks like something out of a children’s horror story, like something dead and unholy borne out of hellfire and stardust. _How did they ever let you survive,_ Ginny thinks, baffled at the ease with which Luna slips into this post-war world they’ve built, like a part of a puzzle with all the edges jagged, worn out. 

Luna wakes suddenly, her eyes more open and honest than perhaps what Ginny deserves but Luna does not believe in deserving. She believes in getting what you get and making do with it. So, Ginny looks down at her, tries a smile, however broken.

“I know you’re still fighting,” Luna murmurs, eyes boring into Ginny, “but stay here, with me, tonight, not in your head. I know it’s hard. But I can’t fight for you and you can’t fight for me but I can be there when you need a rest and I think now is a good time.”

“Be my girlfriend.” Ginny says, faster than the wind outside, faster than her own heart. 

“I thought I already was.” Luna replies from between the pale ghostly glow of her smile, her fingers splayed open over Ginny’s heartbeat, guarding. Ginny swallows through the lump in her throat as Luna’s head rests against her chest, her breath soft somewhere on the precipice of sleep and dreams.

Ginny shakes a little, with relieved laughter, lets her head fall against Luna’s and lets her eyes close. 

Something unfurls inside her gut, something like a beginning, something like a rebuilding, something beyond endings and time. She lets it. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from work song by hozier because i am a simple gay.
> 
> thank you for reading. comments and kudos give me a reason to live. if you feel like it, leave one! thank you!


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